Monday, December 31, 2001

Boston Herald's Weekly Chain To Sell Front Page Ad Space
Community Newspaper Company editor-in-chief Kevin Convey says his staff prefers 1A ads over layoffs. "I think editorial people in general are not crazy about having ads on page one, but, at the same time, we're cognizant of the need to float the boat and the economy we're in," he says. "It appears to be a nonissue with readers."

Claim: NYT.com "Rings" Promo Site Looks Like Editorial
Russ Britt says a "Lord of the Rings" promotion on the New York Times website has the look and feel of a regular NYTimes.com news page. The CBSMarketWatch.com reporter says: "The Times page is the latest example of how the modern world of Internet journalism is colliding with the age-old struggle of keeping news and advertising apart. In industry circles it's jokingly referred to as the separation of church and state." Britt notes that his employer also has a sponsored site that looks like an editorial page.

Fortune Noses out Bride's, Business Week for 01's Most-Ads Honor
Fortune wins in the ad pages competition with 4,019 pages in 2001 -- off by 35 percent from a year ago. (Last year, the magazine ranked No. 2 behind the The Industry Standard, which went under in '01.) Bride's, a Conde Nast title, had 3,856 ad pages in 2001, and Business Week sold 3,785 pages to capture third place.

Tuesday, December 18, 2001

Report: Primedia trying to unload Modern Bride
Conde Nast, Martha Stewart, and the publisher of Bridal Guide are interested in the title, which could go for more than $50 million.

Newsday to Offer More Buyouts, Kill Tech Section
Newsday says it expects to offer its second round of buyouts in January -- about 50 workers took last summer's packages -- and fold its Plugged In technology section. "Tribune is going through cost reductions at all of its properties, and we're just one of them," says Newsday chief of staff Michael Schroeder.
> Publisher says Newsday might cut up to 48 pages a week

Monday, December 17, 2001

ABC News Staffers Charged $6.75 for Wine at Holiday Bash
"Page Six" says in its fifth item that ABC News staffers were also charged $10 to bring their spouses to the holiday party. (The ABC party news was disclosed during Friday's Lloyd Grove online chat at washingtonpost.com.)

Saturday, December 15, 2001

Sun Targets 140 Jobs with Voluntary Buyouts
The Baltimore Sun Co. said yesterday that it will offer about 200 voluntary buyouts in an effort to eliminate 140 positions by the end of March. The company hopes to get between 70 and 80 workers to take the offer; the rest of the staff cuts will come from not filling existing open positions and from attrition. The paper will determine early next year if layoffs are necessary.

Friday, December 14, 2001

Gannett Freezes Top Exec Salaries For 2001
At Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper publisher, "around 80 of our top executives are not getting increases this year," said Gannett spokeswoman Tara Connell, but they will get stock options instead. Tribune Co. and Knight Ridder will also reduce executive and employee perks.

Tuesday, December 11, 2001

Providence Journal Cuts 92 Jobs Through Voluntary Buyouts
The Belo-owned paper's deal includes 18 months of pay, but doesn't provide health care coverage. Of the 92 employees accepting buyouts, 26 come from the newsroom.

Chicago Sun-Times Staffers Approve No-raise Contract
In an 86-72 vote, Chicago Sun-Times guild members approved a three-year contract that offers no pay increase in the first year, a 1 percent hike in the second year and a 1.25 percent raise in the third year.

Ridder says he's not cutting staff to improve profit margins
Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder says "all this talk about making cuts to raise the margins to make more money ... is a lot of baloney." He tells Terence Smith: "We were not cutting staff to improve the profit margin. Our profit margin has been falling. We were reducing staff and we were reducing other expenses in an effort to try to cushion falling revenue. This was not about improving the margin; this was trying to protect the margins to the extent that we could, knowing full well that the margins were going to fall, anyway."
> K-R's Grand Forks editor is covering a county beat these days

Monday, December 10, 2001

Journal Newspapers Cuts Staff, Ends ABC Audits

In a surprising move, the chain of Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland papers will no longer have its circulation verified by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Instead, it will give advertisers copies of the forms it submits to the Postal Service, which distributes its six dailies. The company went through at least two rounds of layoffs this year, reduced expenses by using more wire-service copy, and stopped publishing on Mondays. Another big change may be in the works: Industry sources say Journal is considering eliminating one or two of its daily editions as a way to streamline operations.

PNI Shuts Down PhillyTech
The three-year-old monthly about the region's technology companies ceased publication because tech advertising sales have "virtually vanished" over the last year. Both editors and all three business staff members were laid off. Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. also publishes The Inquirer, the Daily News, and Philly.com.

Newseum to Close While Awaiting New Building
The Freedom Forum, the media foundation that runs the Newseum in Rosslyn, Va., decided yesterday to close the museum in March and reopen it three years later in a new home under construction in downtown Washington. Decline in investments blamed.

Friday, December 7, 2001

CNN Cuts Four Shows and 30 Jobs
Axed shows include "Burden of Proof," "NewsSite," "Showbiz This Week," and "Travel Now." The people losing their jobs -- including on-air talent Joie Chen, Roger Cossack, and Bill Tush -- all worked for the discontinued programs. The Atlanta-based news operation eliminated the jobs of at least 400 CNN employees this year.

K-R to Cut Bonuses, Freeze Pay for Execs Making $200K+
Knight Ridder says it will cut bonuses for about two dozen corporate officers this year and freeze salaries next year for the fewer than 100 employees making over $200,000 a year. CEO Tony Ridder said at a media conference: "Nobody at this point is particularly optimistic about next year."
> Ridder says K-R will perform in "top tier" of industry peers in '02

Tuesday, December 4, 2001

MSNBC.com Layoffs Show Cost Of More Viewers, Fewer Ads
"Surprise layoffs" take nine percent of staff of 200 after costs skyrocket for Sept. 11 coverage. Streaming video costs alone totaled $1 million more than budgeted.

Monday, December 3, 2001

Webnoize, Online Pub Covering Digital Music Industry, Is Unplugged
After eight years, group will reorganize while suspending publication until 1st quarter of 2002.

Friday, November 30, 2001

Peretz Selling Chunk of The New Republic to New York Sun Backers
Paul Colford says The New Republic owner Martin Peretz is expected to sell two-thirds of the liberal magazine to investors who are also among the seven backers of The New York Sun, a conservative daily newspaper expected to debut early next year.

Thursday, November 29, 2001

Time Inc. To Shut Down Three Magazines
The victims are On (formerly called Time Digital), Asiaweek, and Family Life, according to Matthew Rose's sources. "The plans still require final approval and could change at the last minute," he says. Layoffs are expected.
> On mag lost its godfather when Isaacson left Time for CNN

Wednesday, November 28, 2001

Ad Revenues Plunge, May Not Have Hit Bottom Yet
The decline was even sharper than ad-revenue falloffs during September, and some analysts worry the advertising business may not have reached a bottom. Many forecasters, including the Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch & Co., now say a turnaround in demand for advertising isn’t likely to occur until midway through 2002 at the earliest.

Tuesday, November 27, 2001

San Francisco Chronicle Begins Reducing Workforce by 220
San Francisco Chronicle publisher John Oppedahl writes in a staff memo: "The need to reduce our workforce was one we hoped to avoid. However, the long-term health of our company requires us to go beyond the cost saving efforts we have taken so far this year." Total ad revenue is down 20 percent from last year, he says. The paper will also will end its MBO-bonus program for management and administrative employees for 2002.
> SF Chronicle dismissals only affect staffers hired after 7/27/2000

Chicago Sun-Times Cuts Five Editorial Jobs
Citing the economic downturn, the Chicago Sun-Times announced it plans to cut five editorial positions, identified as three artists and two library assistants. The move came one day before stalled contract negotiations are expected to resume with the nearly 200 reporters and editors represented by the Chicago Newspaper Guild. Talks scheduled for Nov. 27 are the first since management canceled a session Nov. 19.
> Earlier: Sun-Times cancels talks after union sends letter to advertisers

Monday, November 26, 2001

Star-Ledger Struggles to Slash Budget by $10 Million
The Newhouse newspaper needs to cut costs because many of its key retail advertisers have filed for bankruptcy or cut their spending. The Star-Ledger still promises to honor its famous handbook pledge not to lay off any of its nonunion employees due to a bad turn in the economy -- but jobs are being lost elsewhere because of its cutbacks.

Freedom Forum May Close Newseum Early to Save Money
The Freedom Forum had planned to keep its interactive museum of news in Rosslyn open until mid-2003, when its lease expires, but now it's thinking about closing earlier to save money, reports Jackie Spinner. The Freedom Forum's new, larger museum in D.C. isn't scheduled to open until 2005.

Sunday, November 25, 2001

Seattle Times Boss: "Revenues Are Down More than the Staff Cuts"
Across the country, big newspaper chains are expected to see ad revenue fall 10 percent this year, compared with a 6 percent decline during the painful 1990-91 recession, when thousands of media jobs were lost.

Monday, November 19, 2001

Star-Bulletin Staffers Approve 11.5 Percent Pay Cut by 70-0 Vote
The across-the-board pay cut will save jobs that had been threatened at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Hawaii Newspaper Guild rep Wayne Cahill says the unanimous vote "shows these people stick up for each other." The temporary wage roll-back will be reviewed after February.

Friday, November 16, 2001

Tribune Co. Staffer Suggests Sosa for Exec Post
Hartford Courant columnist Dan Haar writes about pay freezes and wage cuts, including the ones announced this week by Tribune Co., his employer. "One newsroom wag made a fine suggestion that embraces the built-in contradictions of corporate pay," says Haar. "Tribune should promote Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, its most famous employee, to the executive ranks. Five percent of his salary would total $900,000. That's enough to give a 3 percent raise to 600 of us in the cubicles."

Red Herring Lays Off 38, Closes Conference Division
Red Herring Communications Inc. is laying off 27% of its 140-person staff. The latest round of layoffs at Red Herring mostly reflects the closing of the conference division but affects online, business and editorial operations, as well. Separately, the company said it received $10 million in funding from Broadview Capital Partners, its largest shareholder.

Source: CNN Could Spend Year's Budget in Six Mos. CNN was on a ratings high after the terrorist attacks, but now the network has to deal with its old problems of stodgy programming and high costs. A source tells Sally Beatty that at the rate CNN is spending money right now to cover the war, it will burn through its annual news-gathering budget in six months. CNN execs also have to deal with Larry King's salary. He makes $7 million now, but will probably want more, says Beatty.

Emmis Cuts Pay by 10 Percent, Hands Out Stock
The Indianapolis-based media firm will slash paychecks of 2,500 employees by 10 percent beginning Nov. 26. In return, workers will get Emmis stock shares equaling 10 percent of their wages. One employee says: "We were expecting the worst, but this actually turned out to be a positive. Sure, it's a pay cut, but in the end it could actually be a bonus for employees."

Seattle Times, Guild Settle All But One Dispute
The Seattle Times and the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild say they have settled all disputes but one relating to a strike at the newspaper a year ago. The Times has agreed to pay $125,000 to settle accusations that it violated the deal that ended the strike by giving promotions to workers who crossed picket lines. The Guild, meanwhile, will pay $50,000, and The Times will drop a lawsuit that accused the Guild of violating the same deal by refusing to promote the newspaper.

Thursday, November 15, 2001

Wall Street Journal Cuts More Staff
Memo announces pagination changes, elimination of most composing operations in Brussels and Hong Kong. Fourteen positions were cut in each city, with five new "international" jobs created in a planned new editing and pagination facility in South Brunswick.

Study: TV News Bosses Forced to Crank Out More News With Less Cash
More than half of the news directors surveyed by the Project for Excellence in Journalism also say they've been pressured by advertisers -- car dealers and eatery owners are the worst -- to kill negative stories or run positive ones. ANOTHER FINDING: One in four stories done on local news is about crime.

Analyst: Tribune Execs' Pay Cuts "More Symbolic than Anything Else"
The Tribune Co. announcement that senior managers will take a 5 percent pay cut "shows they want to share some of the pain," says analyst John Morton, "but if you're making $400,000 or $500,000 a year, you can afford to take a 10% pay cut." MEMO: Tribune Co. cuts managers' pay, freezes other salaries

Monday, November 12, 2001

SF Chron Discontinues 2002 Internship
Paper cuts both summer and two-year internship programs for 2002.

Tuesday, November 6, 2001

PBS Cuts Staff By More Than 10 Percent
Cuts represent about 59 positions These cuts follow a 9 percent staffing reduction in March. PBS now has just over 500 employees.

Cotts: Are We Dead Yet?
Layoffs are caused by myriad factors: plummeting ad sales after the dotcom bust; rising costs of printing, mailing, and distribution; and for some companies, restructuring. "Media companies continue their slow process of dying from within, a/k/a belt-tightening," writes Cotts.

Monday, November 5, 2001

Seattle Times Cuts Four Photogs
All four photographers in the paper's suburban division were laid off. Through layoffs and attrition, the Seattle Times has now reduced its newsroom staff by 25 percent this year, to 269 full-time employees and 23 part-timers. The need for the photographers diminished when the newspaper stopped publishing zoned editions, said Times spokeswoman Kerry Coughlin. The Times has cut its overall work force by about 20 percent.

Friday, November 2, 2001

Twenty Jobs Cut at Spokesman-Review
The Spokane daily says it is cutting jobs to offset slumping newspaper advertising sales in the region. About 14 of the positions will be cut from the newsroom, representing about 10% of newsroom employees. In July, the paper laid off the equivalent of 20 full-time positions, about 10 of them coming from the newsroom.

Newsmag Still Selling Big After Terror Attacks
Newsmagazines have held on to some increases in single-copy sales since Sept. 11. Time, says newsstand sales have declined with each issue since the week of the terror attacks, but that they are still selling four to five times as many issues as usual. Newsweek says they're selling 75% more copies than before the attacks.

Thursday, November 1, 2001

WSJ Web Boss: Pause Before Going Subscription Route
Wall Street Journal Online publisher Neil Budde, whose site has 609,000 paid subscribers, says: "The weakness in online advertising really shouldn't be the driver for considering a subscription model." He warns that many news sites "won't be able to build sufficient audience to make subscriptions work and will be hurting for page views when advertising rebounds."

Dallas Morning News Boots 73, Hands $371K to Outgoing Boss
The Dallas Morning News let 73 staffers go last Wednesday, including 17 from the newsroom. "People were asked to stay in their cubes and stay quiet so as not to cause even more heartbreak for those being shitcanned," reports Dallas Observer's "Buzz" column. While staffers were getting pink slips, former publisher and editor Burl Osborne saw a one-time payment of $371,082 in "additional compensation" on top of his $79,000/month consulting fee in 2002, notes the alt-weekly.

Time Inc. Boss Predicts Staff Will Be Cut in Half by 2010
Other mag execs at the Folio:Show 2001 saw similarly shrinking staffs. Hearst Magazines president Cathleen Black said her company is paying "unbelievable attention to bringing down costs." Felix Dennis, publisher of Maxim, said American publishers would have to address "massive overstaffing" in the next five years.

Wednesday, October 31, 2001

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel circulation drops 8.5%
Daily circulation dropped by nearly 24,000 at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for the six months ending Sept. 30, compared with the same period last year. The decline in Journal Sentinel circulation came as the paper stopped heavy discounts on subscriptions earlier this year, publisher Keith Spore said.

Tuesday, October 30, 2001

AOL/TW To Drop "CNN Newsroom" If It Doesn't Turn a Profit
The educational program designed to give kids a better global perspective has never made money, which didn't matter when Ted Turner was running the show. AOL Time Warner wants to see some cash, though. "If it is profitable, we'll keep it," a spokesman says of the show -- a favorite of teachers. "If it breaks even, we'll keep it. But if it is going to lose a lot of money, should we keep it? I think the economics of the day dictate that you ask that question."

MSNBC Cuts Costs to Cover War
MSNBC has told staffers it will implement "serious" cost-cutting, analyzing all nonwar and nonessential costs and halting all new long-form documentary production not related to stories on the "war on terrorism." Before Sept. 11, about half of the network's scheduled programming was long-form, documentary style and virtually all of it was in this format on weekends.

Thursday, October 25, 2001

Primedia Implements Salary, Hiring Freezes
Primedia will cut deep into its staff and freeze salaries and hiring to cushion widening quarterly losses. Discretionary expenses including travel are being reduced by 50%. Primedia has already folded the Brill's Content title, laid off about 60% of its About.com staff, and cut about eight percent from all other divisions.

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

U.S. News & World Report staffers to see pay cuts of up to 10%
Editor Brian Duffy says the across-the-board salary cuts were his tradeoff to avoid further job losses at the magazine. (About 20 employees were laid off earlier this year.) "As to morale, people understand we're in a very extraordinary set of circumstances, and extraordinary times require extraordinary measures," he says. "Taking a pay cut is preferable to losing your job."

Going but Not Forgotten: Three Shut Their Covers

Peter Carlson eulogizes Mademoiselle, Lingua Franca, and Brill's Content. "Magazines die at the rate of about one a day. More than 600 are born every year, and half of them die before their first birthday. Only one in 10 lasts a decade. So you can't mourn for every magazine. But I, for one, will miss these three," he writes.

Monday, October 22, 2001

Analyst's guess: Gannett, NYT have each spent up to $4M on war
Lauren Rich Fine's figure includes the cost of extra newsprint, travel, auxiliary staff and communications. "Newspapers are in a very odd spot right now in terms of both serving the public good and trying to serve shareholders," says Fine. "You wish there were times when investors cut companies slack and appreciated what they were doing."

Magazines Mangled By Plummeting Ads
November ad pages in monthly magazines, most of which closed the issues before Sept. 11, will be off 13% from November 2000. Last year's ad-page leader, The Industry Standard, folded in August. Other additions to the magazine graveyard include Expedia Travels, Brill's Content, Working Woman, Inside and Mademoiselle, whose November issue ends a 66-year run. Nearly 40% of the top 200 titles dropped in circulation during the first half.

Friday, October 19, 2001

Time Inc. fires 36 mailroom workers and brings in outside help
Time Inc. says the outsourcing plan has "been in the works for months" and has nothing to do with the anthrax scare at other media outlets. A Newspaper Guild spokesman says of the firings: "To do it at a time when security is of paramount concern is just off the wall and not responsible."
> Read the Newspaper Guild's statement on the mailroom dismissals

Dallas Observer lays off three staff writers
Miriam Rozen, Jonathan Fox and longtime theater critic Jimmy Fowler in reaction to the soft advertising market. Four other writing vacancies have gone unfilled.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

"Painful decision": Orange County Register eliminates 105 positions
Eighty-five people will be laid off effective Friday; the remaining 20 positions are vacancies that will not be filled. Cuts total about 6% of workforce. "While advertising revenue has been declining all year, the events of Sept. 11 caused a dramatic and immediate shortfall, which has continued to deteriorate," said Register publisher and CEO N. Christian Anderson III.

Editor & Publisher's Steve Yahn loses exec editor job (second item)
VNU trimming another 5 percent of the 110 work force at its ailing Adweek Magazine Group, which includes Adweek, MediaWeek, Brand Week and Editor & Publisher. Among those cut: E&P Executive Editor Steve Yahn, West Coast Editor Joel Davis was also cut, as was MediaWeek reporter Daniel Frankel, company officials confirmed. Four jobs at Adweek were also being cut. Rumors have swirled recently that the company wants to sell its Adweek Group to raise cash.

Analyst says networks stand to lose $15M+ daily with war coverage
Amid warnings of cutbacks at the studios and broadcast networks and fears of even more lost revenue if and when a ground war breaks out in Afghanistan, every one of the major networks insists that it will cover the conflict to the hilt, no matter what the cost. Analyst Stuart Linde of Lehman Bros. estimated that the broadcast networks stand to lose $15 million-$20 million a day in missed revenue if they return to wall-to-wall coverage if the United States invades Afghanistan. But analysts also said that additional losses are already discounted in media companies' stock prices.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

KR Earnings Drop 27% On Weak 3Q Ad Revenue
Analysts, acting on the company's warning, had lowered their earnings estimate to 63 cents a share from 79 cents a share, according to Thomson Financial/First Call.

Reuters to cut 500 more jobs -- 3% of staff
The financial-data supplier announced 3Q revenue growth that matched analysts' expectations, but lowered revenue forecasts. Even so, executives said sustainable double-digit earnings growth and operating profit margins of 17% to 20% would be possible over the next five years. The job cuts are in addition to the 1,100 announced in July, the largest number in Reuters' 150-year history.

Time Out NY editor on mag closings: "Cyclical thing, nothing new"
"Magazines aren't as ephemeral as the Internet, newspapers, television or radio," says Cyndi Stivers. "They have more staying power in the minds of readers. A well-edited magazine speaks so clearly and has such a personality that it becomes an entity in the reader's life."

London Freedom Forum's closing called "a major blow" for journos
It was a support network for journalists and a beacon for free speech and a free media. Phillip Knightley laments the closure of the European centre of the Freedom Forum.

Monday, October 15, 2001

Is Murdoch ready to pull the plug on his New York Post?
Michael Wolff says of Rupert Murdoch: "He's acting like a profit-minded executive at the end of his tether with an underperforming business unit." He's on his third editor in two years, and he's cutting costs like crazy. "There's an endgame sense about the present remedies, a one-last-roll-of-the-dice feeling," writes Wolff. "This is what CEOs do when their patience runs out -- they try radical, disruptive solutions that, if they don't work, precipitate the end." (Today's New York Post "On the Newsstand" column says of this week's New York mag: "Is that all there is?" Wolff's piece isn't mentioned.) (New York magazine)

BRILL'S CONTENT SHUTTERED; INSIDE.COM SCALED BACK
From Steve Brill's memo to Brill's/Inside staffers: "I am today suspending the operations of Brill's Content magazine and tailoring down the scope of Inside.com to prepare for it to be sold to Primedia, whereupon it will feature material created by the staff of the MediaCentral publications. Therefore, most of those who are on the Brill's Content/Inside team will have to be laid off effective tomorrow; others will be offered employment opportunities at Media Central." READ BRILL'S STAFF MEMO. New and earlier stories:
> "We worked harder than anyone could ask and it didn't work"
> Brill's staffer: "It was totally expected... it's nice to have closure"
> Kelly's sources say Brill Media burned through $22M-$30M
> Speculation: Kravis will break up Primedia, sell it piece by piece
> Mnookin: "Thirty-eight people, including this author, lost their jobs"
> "This is obviously a very difficult day for me," Brill tells AP's Sutel
> Many Brill's Content staffers predict next issue won't hit newsstands
> Report: Ex-journalist Rattner could come to Brill's rescue
> Brill's "hopeful of an outcome" that'll keep his outfit going
> "There's bad blood between former friends Brill and Rogers"
> Check out Inside.com's history via a timeline, starting October '99

Handelman: Mag industry went from bad to worse after 9/11
New York-based magazine journos feel "twice battered" by industry downturn, Sept. 11 attacks.

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

Belo Corp. Announces Layoffs, Wage Freeze
Belo Corp. will cut 160 jobs this month and freeze wages for one year to bring expenses in line with a slump in advertising revenue. The company, which owns four newspapers including The Dallas Morning News and 18 television stations, has cut its work force about 8 percent since the beginning of the year.